Moranthology

British journalist Moran's (How To Be a Woman) award-winning columns for The Times are available here for an American audience for the first time. In the introduction, she declares her intentions to write "a collection of instances of how brilliant the world often is." To that end, she covers topics that range from her personal history (being homeschooled in a housing project in the industrial city of Wolverhampton, her work interviewing musicians including Keith Richards and Lady Gaga), social issues (benefit reform, the welfare state, the importance of libraries, particularly to poor communities; she describes them as places "where the wealthy's taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary"), and cultural matters (Michael Jackson's funeral, her unexpected delight in the role-playing game World of Warcraft, how very, very good Stephen Moffat's Sherlock is). Each essay offers readers a look at the world from the perspective of someone who is sharply intelligent, deeply kind, and extremely funny.